


Portrait of a Young Woman with a Yellow-Throated Marten

by ludling



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:40:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23770207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ludling/pseuds/ludling
Summary: No alethiometer and no escape. Lyra Belacqua grows up in Mrs Coulter's world.
Relationships: Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter, Lyra Belacqua & Marisa Coulter, Lyra Belacqua & Roger Parslow
Comments: 22
Kudos: 91





	1. Lantern Slide I

The portrait was hidden.

She found it one afternoon, having been sent to fetch the Missus' gloves from her powder room, found it while she was still London street-ruffian enough to snoop.

The gilded frame was near bigger than the painting itself. She fingered the dull metal a little, brought it up to her face, almost without meaning to, to bite the metal and check its value, before her daemon Nicomedian nipped the soft skin of her ankle in his rat-form. She kicked him away. But she'd only done it gently, and watched with pleasure as he changed into a chunky little tortoise. It had taken only a few weeks of her new life for Nico to transform into much more interesting creatures than he ever did on the street.

Our little urchin was as proud of him as we should be sorry for her.

There was no glass like the rest of the paintings in the penthouse. She wondered at that. She's a wily one, and had learned quickly that the Missus (as this unfortunate creature still called her new master in her mind) never missed an opportunity to show off her money.

Glass would spoil it, she decided, after a long moment of slow thought. The colours that the painter had wrought were jewel-like, and shimmered this way and that as she turned the frame. At certain points of the little figure within she could still see the faint marks of charcoal where the outline of the young lady had first been sketched in. It was very fine, she thought again. In her old life, she would have hidden this treasure from Snarky and his gang behind the biggest of the old coal bins at their hideout. It was obviously worth a great deal of money. But more than that - it shone with its own mysterious life.

The young lady and her daemon in the picture were seated in much the same way as countless other society girls had been painted before her. She had dark hair, was wearing a blue silk dress, that the artist had taken great care to render, and her hair was clipped back with a faintly glittering brooch. Her daemon was some sort of golden weasel creature, perched on her lap with one paw raised, as if about to leap towards the viewer.

But it was the painted eyes that made our poor assistant pause in front of the bureau, with its glass potions and many mirrors, having quite forgotten the gloves she was meant to find. In her little frame, the young lady's eyes glowed with some feral spirit our own little urchin recognized deep in her being. It spoke of passion, and a sort of mulishness hard to come by in anyone but orphaned children. The girl had never seen it in her own eyes - but that didn't mean her Missus hadn't, one rainy afternoon, as our girl played at thieving from the choclat stand at Covent Garden.

Nico, ever the wiser out of the two of them, nudged her ankle again. She replaced the portrait back in its little drawer, and took the gloves out of another. She looked at herself in the glass. Her dark hair had been the first thing the Missus had changed. She'd taken her to a salon, and ordered the woman there to cut off everything that touched her shoulders. That had hurt. Our urchin had little vanity, but most of it was concentrated in the way the sunlight might pick out the gold in her old, snag-filled hair. She'd even seen Snarky eye her once in a rare moment of ceasefire.

Her blue dress was cotton, but she had a finer one of silk that might be the portraits twin. Nico changed into a weasel at her elbow, and blinked at her with little black eyes.

"Stop it" She told him quite firmly, shivering a little. "The missus won't like like that."

She was right.

But she would come back to look at the portrait many times regardless.


	2. Twelve

> "I am the shape you made me.  
> Filth teaches filth."
> 
> - **Sophokles** , from Elektra, _An Oresteia: Agamemnon by Aishkylos; Elektra by Sophokles; Orestes by Euripides_ (tr. Anne Carson)

1.

Adele Starminster had disappeared by the time Lyra was returned to the party.

She was returned, like luggage, she did not return. Mrs Coulter held her arm in a tight grip for the rest of the evening, and piloted her from room to room, like one might drive an oxen in the fields. The hot metallic smell that had once again been on her when she prised Lyra’s hands off the roof scaffolding, and pulled her back through the window had dispersed among the perfume of her guests, but Lyra thought she would always smell it now.

Mrs Coulter was a gobbler. _'The lead gobbler'_ Pan had whispered to her, while a woman in a salmon pink gown had kissed Mrs Coulter’s cheeks.

Following this realisation she'd scowled at everyone she was introduced to, until Mrs Coulter took her arm in a hard pinch and whispered “Be rude once more Lyra and it shall be the last thing you will ever do.”

She’d behaved after that. She’d curtsied badly to the last of the departing guests. She’d let herself be shepherded into a much too hot bath and only flinched once, when there was a quiet knock on the door. Mrs Coulter had risen from her spot at the corner of the bathroom and talked to someone through the sliver of open door. Lyra had strained her ears. The loathsome monkey was still sitting quietly behind them.

“It’s done” Lord Boreal’s voice was silky and vile to Lyra’s ears. Mrs Coulter however only nodded, eyes glittering like hard gemstones. Then her gaze had swung back. Lyra stared at her red knees, poking out of the bubbles in the bath water.

The _click_ of the door was loud in the silence.

When Lyra looked up at last, Mrs Coulter was still leaning against the door, regarding her with a cool gaze.

“You’ve had Roger all this time, en’t you?” Lyra said, not being able to help herself. Pan had turned into a polecat, the fiercest of his forms, next to her. It gave her little comfort. The monkey would beat them at the slightest nod from Mrs Coulter. It was just too fast and strong and mean.

Mrs Coulter meanwhile continued to just stare at her, still in the green gown that Lyra would have thought perfectly beautiful just a few short days ago. Her mouth was a thin line. Lyra was not a child of much imagination, otherwise that look alone would have been enough.

“What would you have done if I hadn’t been there to pull you back through the window Lyra?”

Lyra thought back again to the sickening screech the metal railing had given as it bent. Thought of her feet, still in their white lace socks and shiny shoes, dangling over the edge of their building. Thought of Pan, fluttering around her as a little finch, unable to do more than keep out of the golden monkey’s paws, while Mrs Coulter screeched, more like a wounded animal than her daemon, saying nothing of the put-together lady Lyra had come to know-

“I would have dropped and prob’ly died.” Lyra answered blandly, and wondered once again whether that would have been so much worse than her current predicament. “Or maybe I would have survived and run away after all.”

Mrs Coulter had lost the little bit of colour she’d regained in the intervening hours. She stalked towards Lyra, the skirt of her dress dragged behind her, and Lyra had a vision of green poison oozing out of a bottle.

“You would have died,” Mrs Coulter’s eyes shone, not with malice as it seemed to Lyra, but with tears. She bent over Lyra, and her right hand clutched the curved edge of the bath hard enough that her knuckles had turned white. The monkey had leapt up on her shoulder. It’s black eyes regarded Lyra dispassionately. Pan had tensed next to her. She buried her palm in the fur at his neck. “You would have died for nothing. You would have dashed your head open on the pavement! After all the trouble you’ve—”

Mrs Coulter appeared to stop herself with great effort. Lyra narrowed her eyes.

“The you could’ve got another assistant! I’m sure there’s plenty stupid girls who want to wear stupid dresses and go to stupid parties and-”

But what else these stupid girls would like, Lyra never got to list. Mrs Coulter’s hands had shot out, closed about her neck, then shoved her firmly under water.

The next few minutes were forever hazy in Lyra’s mind. She knew that she thrashed about a lot, sloshing great waves of bath water on the tiled floor and on Mrs Coulter’s dress. She couldn’t see in the torrent of water and bubbles, but she felt it when Pan broke the great taboo, and sunk his teeth into Mrs Coulter’s wrist.

Then there was air - great glorious gulps of air - which Lyra took, one after the other, as she scrabbled back towards the edge of the bathtub. Pan wound his way around her neck in his ermine form. Lyra touched his wet fur and began to cry.

There was a long pause then -

“Lyra? Oh. Oh I didn’t mean it- oh please don’t cry-”

Mrs Coulter’s voice was pained. When Lyra blinked through her tears and saw her there, kneeling next to the tub amongst the big puddles, hair flat on the left where the water had caught it, she began to cry harder. For this Mrs Coulter, with her soft eyes and sweet voice, was so much like the woman she’d met in the Great Hall at Jordan College. She had quite forgotten how much she had loved that woman since that awful day in the study, yet here she was again, as if by magic.

“Lyra, darling-”

She let Mrs Coulter put her arms around her, even though Pan bristled before he fluttered out of reach in his moth form. The wet silk of the green dress felt alien against Lyra's cheek after the comfort of Pan's fur, but she bore it well enough. She made the last of her sobs a little louder, for the woman’s benefit, and then when her voice still wobbled a little from her tears Lyra said-

“I want Roger back. If you want me to be your little pet- I want my friend back.”

Mrs Coulter leaned back, and, unnoticed by Lyra, something sharpened in her expression.

“Lyra," Mrs Coulter peered at her from under her lashes. It was a sly look, and Lyra didn't care for it. "I’ve taken on the expense and the burden of the remainder of your education as a young lady. Jordan College couldn’t afford you anymore.”

Lyra began to speak, but Mrs Coulter held up a hand “How about this? You remain here as my assistant for a fixed term. Let’s say one year.” She pointed one finger. The nail was painted auburn to contrast her party dress. Lyra had been along to the salon, but had only been allowed clear gloss on her own nails. “And after that you can have your little friend back.”

“Roger?” Lyra said suspiciously.

“Roger.” Mrs Coulter nodded, using the finger to tuck a strand of hair behind Lyra’s ear.

“How do I know you ‘ent lying?” Lyra asked.

“We’ll sign a contract.”

Lyra knew from her occasional studies with the scholars specializing in laws, that contracts were promises that could not be broken. Unfortunately like most subjects taught to her at Jordan, she had only a tattered knowledge, prospective law clerks having been the easiest to evade out of all the scholars.

Furthermore the thought of Lord Asriel was on her mind. He would find a way out of his prison, and then he would visit Jordan and wonder where she was. _Daughters were ever so much more precious than nieces_ , Lyra reasoned with herself. She took no special notice of Pan's slow circling silence above her.

“Alright”

If only Lyra knew the hard year ahead.

2.

The next fortnight of working for Mrs Coulter, once Lyra knew she was a gobbler, became both harder and stranger than before.

There was no longer any pretense about a fast approaching trip to the north.

“Perhaps once your year of service is up you might like to visit as my travel companion?” Mrs Coulter had said this with a smile in her voice, that even Lyra’s untrained ear understood to be mockery.

“Me and Roger will want to be getting back to Jordan.” She answered, sitting up a little straighter over the sums Mrs Coulter was teaching her.

“ _Roger and I,_ ” Mrs Coulter corrected her “And there is no space for you at the college. The Master must give rooms to people who actually want to learn.”

“Then I’ll become a servant with Roger.”

This Mrs Coulter had only smiled at.

When her morning lessons were done, Lyra accompanied Mrs Coulter to a variety of new and bright places. Sometimes they spent hours dawdling around one of the big London parks. Other times Mrs Coulter might take her for ice-cream, but they’d stay at the soda fountain long after their shaved ice was gone, telling her to wave to _‘the gentleman with the blue scarf’_ or _‘the chimneysweep with the stitched leather purse’_ if they waved to her.

And eventually the afternoon would drag, and _‘the gentleman with the green waistcoat’_ or ‘ _the young lady with the red hair’_ would salute them, and Lyra would wave back, confused and bored.

Then they would go back to the apartment, and Mrs Coulter would set her free for the hour before dinner. “You’ve become very quiet” She said on this latest afternoon, almost reproachfully.

If anything Pan was the oddly mute one during these excursions, and frequently positioned himself a little away from Lyra. This hurt her, but she did not quite know how to talk to him about it. They'd simply never had a problem like it before. He was still angry at her for crying in Mrs Coulter’s arms in the bath, that much was clear to her.

Lyra also could not have articulated why she had felt less like playing with every afternoon that passed during this strange fortnight. She sat in her room, listened to the tick of the clock on the desk, and watched Pan groom himself in his new silence. There was a feeling in her, like a slow gathering storm, that she had done something unforgivable. That if Roger found out about it, both him and Sacilia would turn their faces away from her.

On this particular afternoon, she sat by her window, frowning down at the cascading roofs below. The trees had begun to turn and Lyra was thinking about the hours past.

Mrs Coulter had taken her to a little sweets store near Saint Martin In the Fields, and had given her a sovereign to spend on whatever she pleased. Pan had spent his hour as a lizard and had taken little flickering licks of the red taffy apples on display in the window. Lyra had not had to wait long. A woman with a tortoise shell hair clip had raised her hand to both of them. Lyra had borne Mrs Coulter’s hands on her shoulder and waved back. But that was not what bothered her.

 _There’d been a little girl,_ she thought. _Behind that lady there was a little girl, and she was looking at me, and she looked less afraid when I waved._

Pan was on the chair as a tabby cat, and he opened one green eye when she gasped.

 _“We’re the bait Pan!”_ She whispered to him, her voice shaking.

Pan only looked at her with contempt. It was an emotion that had never passed between them. Lyra gawped in new shock.

“Of course we are Lyra,” He said quite coldly, and closed his one open eye again “She’s caught at least five children with you. Didn’t you realize?”

“No Pan! I didn’t realise!” Lyra hissed back, and stared at him in mounting horror “Did you think I knew this whole time and went along with it?”

“How should I know? She’s got you. She can nearly kill you- kill us- and what do you do? Let her kiss you and dress you and hug you like you were her own stupid baby-“

Lyra let out a little half howl, and ran at Pan, pushing him off the edge of the seat. He fell with a startled hiss. It felt like a big hand had taken Lyra's own shoulder and wrenched it. She screamed again. It was an awful pain. _Her Pan! Betrayed by her own Pan!_

“What is going on in here?”

Mrs Coulter’s voice was light, but her eyes, which surveyed the scene of Lyra holding her hurt shoulder, and Pan who now hissed as a snow leopard cub, with black anger. Lyra stared at her, stared at the golden monkey who’d flitted into the room ahead of her, and now stood poised ready to spring at them. She looked again to the window. Mrs Coulter followed her gaze.

The window latch wouldn’t open under her fingers Lyra found. Pan was still behind her, shouting "Stop it Lyra!" but she kept clawing at the metal, felt her nails tear, even as Mrs Coulter’s arms came around her-

_“No! No! Let me go! I hate you! I hate all of you! No -”_

Mrs Coulter had wrapped her arms around Lyra in a strong grip.

“Lyra,” She said very firmly into the girls ear “Hush now.”

Lyra struggled harder, and for a moment almost came free. Pan and Mrs Coulter’s daemon were both watching her, and that made her struggle harder than ever. The Golden Monkey had bared his teeth and Pan wore an expression of horror. His Lyra. His stupid, block-headed Lyra. He wanted to fly to her side and beg for forgiveness. He wanted to peck her eyes out. Lyra saw neither clearly through her tears.

Finally she slumped in Mrs Coulter’s arms. Her whole body ached. Her hair was plastered to her forehead. Mrs Coulter’s cheek was still against hers. It was cool, like the face of some marble statue in a quiet museum.

“Why would you do that?” Lyra said “Why would you use me to get other kids?”

Mrs Coulter exhaled.

“It’s a part of my work Lyra. One day it’ll help all the little boys and girls in Brytain. But if I’d known how much it would upset you, I wouldn’t have involved you.” _Liar,_ Pan thought through their link, _She did it so you'd be just as guilty as she is_. Lyra ignored him. He felt the blow of her silence as though he had turned the corner of a familiar passageway only to find it bricked up.

“I don’t wanna do it anymore.” She said in a tiny voice instead. It a shadow of the tone she used to employ with the Librarian, when the day was particularly fine and the lesson particularly dry. It had usually worked, though not because of her wheedling as Lyra still thought. The Librarian, like the Master, had loved her.

“Alright” Mrs Coulter said “Alright darling. I promise.”

Mrs Coulter still held her. It was less strange that afternoon. Her hair smelled of some rich perfume and Lyra, her eyes still closed, let herself slump back a little. She felt a touch on her leg. Pan’s little paw. She aimed a kick in his general direction and was rewarded by a sharp squeak of pain.

They stayed like that for a long time.

3.

It was hard work at first to sleep in her little bedroom with Pan locked outside.

Mrs Coulter said it was high time Lyra and Pan learned how to keep a little distance between them, and Lyra had agreed almost at once.

Lyra gritted her teeth, ignored his little cries on the other side of the door, and by the third day she could almost sleep the whole night.

4.

The last important event of Lyra's twelfth year, happened on a night just before autumn turned to winter.

Tony Costa's face was pale and frightened in the faint moonlight that shone into Lyra’s room. He’d woken her with a soft touch to the shoulder. For a long second she had been disoriented. Had her and Roger fallen asleep on Ma Costa’s boat after loosening it from its ropes? Why was it nighttime? Mrs Lonsdale would box her ears if she’d missed dinner-

But then she blinked, and the elegant blue ceiling of her room at Mrs Coulter's penthouse had come into focus behind Tony’s head.

“What are you doing here?” Lyra sat up, and rubbed her eyes to get the last of the sleep out of them. Tony had taken a step back. He was dressed in darker colours than Lyra ever saw him in.

“We’ve come to get you” He said and Lyra wondered if he knew how young he looked. “We’re going north- to find Billy.”

“We?” Lyra whispered back. There was a movement at her door. Pan, in his snow ermine form was peeking at them, tail pulled close to his body. His nose twitched hopefully. Lyra looked away.

“Yeah we. All the gyptains have formed a rescue gang.”

“Why do you need me then?”

“Cause your Ma’s the head gobbler.”

“My Ma?”

“Mrs Coulter innit?”

Lyra stared at him. Her head pounded and she felt a little sick. _Mrs Coulter? My mother?_ Her mother had died in an airship accident. Right along with her father. Who'd turned out to be Lord Asriel after all. A little rattle came from the grate in her room. Pan had taken another step into the room. Tony was still looking at her.

“Are you lying to me Tony Costa?”

He shook his head. “Nah. It’s deadly serious. We’re heading north, and they’ve all been tearing their hair out about you. About you being a prisoner here.”

"Then we should go," Lyra said and watched the relieved smile wash some of the fear out of his face. "We should go before my- before Mrs- before _she_ wakes up."

It took nearly no time for her to be ready. Lyra kept her light blue pjamas, but stuffed her sockless feet into the sturdier leather shoes Mrs Coulter bought her for park outings. The she took Tony's hand. The soft tread of Pan's paws was behind them. His daemon led them along the dim hallway, towards the lift, which Lyra could see - her heart speeding up - was jammed open with a crossbar. Tony turned to grin at her, proud and and a little flushed. He let go of her and walked ahead a little, raising his hand to touch the golden lift doors when-

_Bang!_

The shot lifted Tony off his feet a little. Lyra saw him stumble. Saw him smack his palm to his brow, as though he was a scholar who’d just understood some important fact about his field, perhaps even life, _(Eureka!)_ , then tumble forward and hit the ground. His daemon, a hawk which had perched next to Pan on the bureau, disintegrated in a swirl of dust. There was a splatter of something dark on the gold of the lift that hadn't been there before.

Lyra turned.

Mrs Coulter stood there, pistol still raised, and for a moment Lyra wondered if she was going to be shot too. There was something cold and flat about Mrs Coulter's face. The gun wavered towards Lyra. The corridor was quiet. It might as well have just been Lyra and Mrs Coulter in the whole world. Then something flickered. Another gyptain, an older boy, had come out of Mrs Coulter’s study behind her, and was rushing at Mrs Coulter who still hasn’t noticed him-

Lyra shouted quite without meaning to _“Watch out!”_

Mrs Coulter ducked, and the gyptains wild swing, which would have crushed the back of her skull only hit air. She brought her hand down in a flat motion, and the gyptain fell at her feet. He was alive though. His daemon feebly dragged herself closer to him. Lyra felt Pan's whince through the muted wall of their connection. The monkey stalked over to them and sat, his black eyes on the gyptain's unconscious face, and stunned daemon. Mrs Coulter was staring too, her chest heaving a little, the gun lowered at her side.  


 _Benjamin_ , Lyra remembered suddenly, _this gyptain's name is Benjamin and he used to collect Tony if he'd played too long._

Later she will sit with Mrs Coulter on the sofa in the study. There were men from the Magisterium all over the apartment. They swarmed like so many insects. Lyra had asked that they keep out of her room and was ignored. She asked Mrs Coulter what would happen to Benjamin and was ignored. Pan had curled up in her lap as a ferret. She found no comfort in his soft fur. There were stones in her stomach. Tony was dead. Benjamin was captured. She had warned Mrs Coulter. She had gobbled those children. Roger and Sacillia would turn their faces from her.

“They broke in” Mrs Coulter said again and again, to different men in black uniforms “They wanted to kidnap my daughter.”

“Am I your daughter then?” She had finally asked, over a cup of hot chocolatl illuminated by the first pale rays of dawn.

Mrs Coulter had looked at her for a long moment. “You are.”

“And Lord Asriel is my father?”

This brought something sour to Mrs Coulter’s expression but she nodded. “He is.”

They both stared into their mugs of chocolate for a moment.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Are you happy that I’m your mother?” Mrs Coulter asked. Lyra looked up. There was nothing in the tired woman next to her to inspire terror. Her hair was limp, and her dressing gown a pretty blue. She'd slumped slightly next to Lyra, now that there were no more Magesterium soldiers left in the room, and quiet had returned to the penthouse.

Lyra searched herself.

“I don’t know.”

Mrs Coulter’s lips quirked a little.

“Well there you are then.”

5.

Being Mrs Coulter’s daughter was once again different to being her assistant.

Lyra slept in her mother’s room for a whole week after the gyptain break-in.

“You have my eyebrows you know” Mrs Coulter said to her early the first night, and touched her fingers to them as if to prove it. Lyra could only stare at her. Pan was locked outside with the Golden Monkey. She was shy in this new role. She no more knew how to be a daughter than Mrs Coulter knew how to be a mother.

“Why did you send me to Jordan to live?”

“That was Asriel’s idea.” Mrs Coulter traced her finger down the side of Lyra's face “To keep you away from gossip. I tried very hard for many years to find you.”

Privately, Lyra was glad it took her twelve years. She wondered often this past week who she would have been had she grown up in the golden apartment, grown up in pretty dresses, with Mrs Coulter to wash her hair. _A snooty cow,_ Pan had whispered, and Lyra had hidden her smile behind her hand. She wondered if Pan still felt any of her emotions behind the frosted glass she'd built between them.

She was still for a long while then, running her hand over the soft coverlet and imagining Pan's fur.

“Can Roger please come and live with us now?”

“There’s still seven months left on our contract Lyra." Mrs Coulter answered, her voice thick with sleep "He’ll come after that.”

There was something final in Mrs Coulter's renewed silence. Lyra thought of the black tunnel of a gun-barrel wavering towards her and steeled herself for one more question.

“Where is he?”

“Somewhere very nice.”

Lyra believed this least of all.


	3. Thirteen

1.

Boarding school was in many ways a miniature of Jordan College.

Lyra had watched with at first avid interest, then mild annoyance, and now in her fourth month at St. Dorothea’s School for Young Ladies, with scorn.

It was the same squabbles but in feminine terms. The librarian wanted more money for new editions of dry, improving books from London. The head of home economics thought learning to sew with anything less than real French silk thread was a waste of time. The prefects had a new pin specially designed every term and would pinch you if you didn't get out of their way in the hallway.

The rivalries lower down the pole weren’t much better. Lyra and Pantalaimon had been the target of a few of these empty-headed spites when they’d first been dropped off like an unwanted pair of gloves near half a year ago. After the first week Lyra had simply accepted private possessions as a thing of the past. It hadn’t been the most painful lesson after all.

“Now this won’t be for long” Mrs Coulter - _Mother_ \- Lyra had mentally corrected herself for the thousandth time, had said “If our luck holds I should be back from the North by May Day.”

She’d only laughed at Lyra’s scowl, tucking her daughter into the crook of her arm where they’d sat on the sofa in the living room of the penthouse. Her perfume had been sweet and comforting in the air around them.

“Don’t you want your friend back?” Mrs Coulter had said, threading her fingers through Lyra’s hair, almost absentmindedly, appearing not to have noticed the sudden tension “This is the trip where I collect him for you.”

 _Over a year later,_ Pan had thought, curled up under the writing table, as far as he could remove himself without extreme pain. Lyra had ignored him as was their habit.

“Will I actually see Roger this time, or will it be another trick?”

Her Mother’s nails had dug into her scalp for a brief, but painful, spasm.

“Lyra, say what you have to say outright or save your breath hmm?”

Lyra had known she would be in the wrong somehow again. But she had still lifted her head and had met her Mother’s gaze evenly.

“You said one year.”

“I said one year and then you’d get your little friend back. We never specified how soon after the one year.”

Her Mother’s blue eyes had a faint sparkle to them, as they always did when she was being cruel. But her hand had gentled to stroke Lyra’s cheek. The golden monkey watched them from the side-board. Lyra felt his black gaze on her like a trap ready to spring.

She shook Mrs Coulter's hand off anyway. It was one of her last rules. She didn't allow caresses for long if she could help it. If she had been a little older and a little cleverer with adults she would have translated the little spasm about Mrs Coulter's mouth as hurt. As it was Lyra only understood they were to have another fight. They barely went a week without one. Lyra had refused to learn shame. She would be stubborn in a department store full of other shoppers, and she would be stubborn in the quiet rooms of the penthouse. She bared her teeth and used her nails until her Mother did the same.

Dully, she felt Pan give a warning signal. _'It's me the golden monkey bites, not you'_ he'd snapped at her after a particularly vicious fight in the Royal Botanical Gardens that had left them limping for a week after. Lyra had recoiled at the faint insinuation that they were separate even in their hurt. It was the one link left between them she had thought.

To be in pain together was better than to be stuck alone.

And so Lyra’s last memory of Mrs Coulter was outside of the school entrance, on another overcast day. She’d begun fussing with the collar of Lyra’s uniform again. Lyra had still been angry with her. Angrier than she could ever recall being at another human being. _‘Lyra you look so lovely dear’_ Mrs Coulter had announced, back at the apartment when the uniform had first been delivered and held out like a peace offering. She had sighed when Lyra had been mute in response. And she had sighed again as she stood in front of the still-running car, as she parceled Lyra out to strangers once again. Sighed like she was losing something very valuable. _Like a gemstone, or a expensive watch,_ Pan had whispered.

 _Two gemstones,_ Pan had corrected himself on that first day. _Two gemstones on the grey flat earth that is St. Dorothea’s._

Things had not improved from there.

Lyra had formerly been a gifted child at making friends. It had been a double-act between her and Pan. The Head Librarian back in Jordan used to say they could charm the text off a page.  


In the dining hall of St. Dot’s they’d sat like two strangers. No one had joined them then, and no one sat with them now, four months later. Lyra sometimes thought there were a few girls she wouldn’t have minded being friends with. Priscilla, now sitting two seats down from her and reading a worn book, had something about her that reminded Lyra of Roger. There was a set of twins in the form below hers that waved to her occasionally.

 _Guess we lost the knack,_ Pan thought to her facing away. His voice was cold, so Lyra made hers colder. _We don’t deserve friends,_ she thought back, pushing her dinner around the edges of her plate.

_Not after Roger. Not after Tony._

2.

The next day was a Sunday, and the only part of the week Lyra didn’t despise.

She rose early, donned her leather winter boots, and overalls she’d found in the garden shed over an old linen button-up she’d taken from the Theater Club chest. She had to hide it in a supply closet and fold everything thrice once worn -but it was worth it. St. Dots boarders were expected to wear the uniform even on their day off. St. Dot’s boarders were expected to spend their Sunday doing something productive like needle-point, or watercolours, or reply to letters from their families.

Lyra would have rather traipsed through the woods naked than do any of those things. She had a mission. She had to train. She was going to run away and get it right this time.

Mrs Coulter had sent her three letters over the past month. Lyra had only read the first, and then had thrown each following one in the small fire of the library.It had been another perfectly charming account of her travels in the North. If Lyra had read the last she would have found a post-script with words like _‘only what’s best’_ and _‘return in a fortnight’_ and even one very lightly inked _‘please’_. But she did not and that was that. Lord Asriel and Jordan College held their near two-year silence.

It was still early spring dark when she stole into the dining hall long before the Sunday breakfast bell was due to ring. Everything was already laid out, steaming in the steel containers. Pan fluttered by her side as a moth. He did not hiss any warnings. He was just there. Like a doll. Or a dead limb some doctor would saw off her one day.

 _They let it get cold on purpose,_ she thought darkly. Lord Boreal had been the one to suggest St. Dorothea's to Mrs Coulter. Lyra was sure he at least knew that behind all the pomp and glitter of the brochure and architecture, the actual students lived a meager and cruel existence. She hated him as much as she hated any adult. He had a way of smiling at her when Mrs Coulter wasn't looking that made her skin crawl. Pan made no reply, but she thought she felt something like a flicker of acknowledgement.

There was nothing much to spoil in the breakfast anyway. The porridge was vile at every temperature in Lyra’s experience. But there was only so much to be ruined in bread rolls, baked fresh once a week, and though the apples were small and mealy, one did develop an eye for picking out the sweet ones. She stuffed everything plus two still warm hard boiled eggs in the pockets of her overalls.

Some of the teachers had a sturdy faculty-issue thermos to carry hot coffee around all day. Lyra had been eyeing these for a while, but had yet to figure out a way to appropriate one. They were coming out of the worst of winter at least. Sometimes it got so cold in the second form dormitory that Lyra didn't sleep a single minute. The prefects always had it warm in their rooms. Lyra supposed the idea was to encourage all of them to want to be prefects. It only encouraged her to want to leave even more desperately. She'd made a plan. She'd run away in a month when it got bearable to sleep outside. She'd run all the way to Oxford and be free of the whole stinking lot of them. She would find Roger after that.

So, training Sundays.

Twenty minutes later Lyra was half walking, half running up the last slope, that would take her out of sight of any of the school buildings. The country lanes were still gloom-filled and mist-shrouded, especially as the leafless trees grew denser around her. Sometimes she would slip on a stray patch of ice.

But it was worth it for this weekly pleasure.

It was worth it to feel the icy air in her nose. It was worth it once a week to wear itchy, ill-fitting clothes, if only so she could pick up a stick and hit the nearest tree trunk with all her energy. It was worth it so she could kick that big rock, nearly hitting Pan, who turned an hissed in his weasel form -

By the time she saw the sun - a thin, pale disk that gave no warmth - Lyra had left the path to reach a little stream that flowed alongside it. She stepped one foot on the thin sheet of ice that covered it. It cracked easily under the thick sole of her boot. An echo of an old Jordan sense of satisfaction came to her then. Once Roger and her had destroyed a brick-builder toddler’s poor clay castle. It had been after a lost war against the older children, and they were trudging back home, covered in clay. They’d both had an ear-boxing from Mrs Lonsdale for it, but Lyra had remembered the mean happiness. To destroy something delicate and pretty-

She’d gotten a few yards along the stream when something stopped her.

It was like an owl call, or the hiss of a thousand cats or the scratch of nails across yew tree bark-

Lyra looked up from her sodden boots.

A witch, for that was what she plainly was, dressed in flowing maple leaves and something that flickered like spider silk in a breeze, was standing on the unbroken ice in front of her. The ice should not have supported a human woman’s weight. The stream had led Lyra partway across a bare field. Lyra could see a little farmhouse at the edge of the woods, its windows glowing comfortably. She used to fantasize about the family that lived there on particularly bad Sundays. They felt very far away.

The witch did not have a daemon with her.

Lyra felt Pan rush past her in his gull form, one she hadn’t seen in years. _It’s just a witch Pan-_ She half spluttered half thought, _Just a witch!_ some other voice positively crowed inside her. _A witch! Here!_ “They can send-”

Her eyes finally landed on the woman’s face. It was set, like that scholar’s head in the ice long ago, but in an expression that frightened Lyra instinctively. It was not the snarl of a wild animal, but the feral aspect of the trapped creature- ready to snap and lash out-

The witch snatched Pan out of the air like he was a firefly.

Lyra fell back at the sick jolting pressure that ran through her. She stumbled. The water of the stream soaked the seat of her pants. It was very cold. She could see the witches nails and how they dug into Pan’s downy white feathers. All her fingers were black with soot or dirt. She tightened her hold. The edge of Lyra’s vision blurred.

“Please..!” She managed then the witch cupped her other hand over Pan’s head and everything went dark.

3.

The wind was very loud and hurt both her ears and her face. It felt like a thousand tiny needles pricking at her skin. She’s an embroidery project that the girls are working on. The punctuation on the only letter she said she wrote to Mrs Coulter months ago, but sent only an empty envelope. Sharpened pencil points and Lord Boreal smiling at her over a glass of Tokay.

_(wingbeats)_

Pockmarked rock under her cheek. A little snout (another point of cold) nuzzling her face. She’s cold. If she could go away again she’d be warm. Someone is saying her name- she turns her face away-

_(wingbeats)_

The wind was back but this time she’s hot, unbearably so. She would pull off the shirt if she could move her arms. But something pinned them. Scales lay against her throat. A coil of muscle that contracted as if to say _I’m here._ Or did she hear that in Pan’s voice? Or Lord Asriel’s? The little necklace shifted again and Lyra let out a little sob. Pan doesn’t talk to her. Not really. They were mute. They were empty.

_(wingbeats)_

The woman’s face was alien. Like an owl turned human. “Drink this” Something that tasted like pine sap trickled into her mouth. " _Drink it_ ," Pan whispered, and she felt the soft comforting fur of his snow leopard form under her slack fingers.

It’s not nice, but Lyra swallowed because the woman had sharper, yellower teeth than she’s ever seen. It helped. She could blink and see that they were on a lonely jut of rock on a vast mountainside covered with pines. A fine swirl of snow was falling. She’s still in her overalls and stolen shirt. Both felt stiff with dirt and ice. One of her shoes was gone.

 _We are very far away,_ she thought, and when Pan replied _(We’re in the North Lyra)_ she felt a curious jolt of happiness totally at odds with her fear.

She’s cold. As soon as she realized that she notices how hard she’s shaking.

“She needs warmer clothes” Pan hissed, still providing a tiny spot of warmth on her lap. “We’ll die otherwise.”

The woman looked one more word away from throwing them both off the cliff. Lyra closed her eyes. She had never been so tired in her life.

When she opened them next, they were still on the outcrop of rock and the woman _(the witch)_ has dropped a deer carcass with a _thud_ at her feet. Lyra drifted in and out, watching her gut it, and begin to strip the hide. About halfway through the witch built and lit a fire.

Lyra’s toes came back to life first. Painfully. Then her legs. Then she sat up, feeling like she was thirteen going on three-hundred and held one stiff hand out towards the warmth. The other she kept in Pan’s fur.

The witch meanwhile had lain the bloody skins out next to the fire. Snowflakes caught in Lyra's eyelashes and she blinked to clear her vision. The witch gave her a cool, almost appraising look, then picked up the pieces and laid them across her shoulders. Deposited a length of gut next to her.

“I did this for my daughter” The witch said, pulling out a long bone pin that had held her black hair in place “Once.” She threaded the pin with a length of gut. Lyra had a brief vision of her home economics teacher seeing this decidely un-French material. If she hadn't felt so rotten she might have laughed.

The witch began to stitch the rough garment to Lyra’s torso. The fire crackled and popped. It had stopped snowing but had gotten dark. There was a curious charge in the air, and every time the needle touched Lyra’s skin she got a little zap. She didn't dare flinch far away. It was some sort of spell being stitched, that much was obvious, because even Lyra knew she’d have had maggots crawling all over her by the next day if the witch was just sewing fresh fur on her. Still foggy, she hunted for something to say.

“Where's your daughter?”

Lyra half expected the answer but still felt her stomach give a little drop when she said-

“Your mother killed her.”

“She gobbled her” Lyra said tonelessly

“After a fashion” The witch said after pausing her work and looking at Lyra for a long moment.

“So you’re going to kill me.” Lyra doesn’t bother framing it as a question. It made sense. Everything that made Pan stop speaking to her felt heavy once more. “She made me a gobbler too.”

The witch was silent at that. If Lyra hadn't been looking at her deer-skin shirt she would have seen the closest thing to shock that the creature was capable of.

“No child” The witch began stitching again, but there were no zaps now. “I’m taking you to your father. He is your mother’s prisoner. He can decide what to do with you.”

“But you were going to kill me,” Lyra pushed, even though what she really wanted is to close her eyes and go away again. She was too tired to think of Lord Asriel as anything more than an old myth.

The witch looked down and this time Lyra did see her emotion, and saw that it was anger. “It would not have been right. You are your own bloom. My daughter would not have wished it. I knew that when I saw you.”

They passed another long moment in silence. To Lyra's eye the dark woods seemed very vast around them.She couldn't quite imagine Mrs Coulter, or Lord Boreal or even the whole Magesterium existing somewhere here.  


“Where’s your daemon?”

“He went away when she died.” The witches voice was very final “I do not think he will come back.”

Lyra didn't know what to say to that, so she flexed her fingers in Pan’s fur, closed her eyes, and soon she slept again.

4.

It took them nearly one more week of flying to reach Lord Asriel's laboratory.

Once she was awake and rapidly leaving the world of her illness behind, Lyra found she enjoyed flying.

The witch's technique was to hoist her up by the torso, and fly with Lyra strapped to her, like a funny variation on a Gyptain baby holster. She'd constructed a crude harness out of more deer skin for this purpose, and once Lyra understood the best way to lock her knees and arms against the bracing wind, it felt almost like she was flying alone through the great expanses of arctic sky. It was also very nice not to be confronted with the witch's flat yellow eyes for large chunks of the day.

Pan turned into a cascade of bird forms in the cold air around them. Sometimes he sailed along as a pelican, sometimes he dived as a hawk and, when he wanted to make Lyra laugh, he turned into a beautiful snowy goose and confused the actual flocks of geese heading south for the summer. It was their old language - the language of Oxford canals, and hidden stacks in the library. It was vocabulary from when they loved each other without question. He hadn't shown off for her like this since that awful day in the bath.

The nights were still hard though.

Lyra didn't ever learn the witch's name, having only understood something like a low clicking screech when asked. She doubted the human throat was built for reproducing the sound.

The witch had very little to say since their cliff-side palaver. She shrugged out of her part of the harness every night to collect wood for their little fires, and hunted small arctic animals for them to eat. Lyra had found the remnant of the St. Dots bread-roll in her overall pocket, and had considered it for a long moment before throwing it in the fire. The last morning at school already felt like something that had happened years ago to another girl, not something from little over a fortnight ago.

The witch left Lyra in charge of building the fire every night. She seemed not to need its warmth, staring up into the star-filled sky overhead each night, and projecting a marked preference for silence.

Lyra could be silent. She'd grown up around scholars who wanted her to hush for most of her life. Unlike back at Jordan though, she burned to ask her silent companion a thousand questions - about the North, about witches, about armored bears and Tartars. She contented herself with observing the country around and underneath them. Once, as they crossed over a mountain range and came to a vast ice-covered fjord under a startling blue sky, Lyra thought she saw an armored bear, slipping gracefully into the crack between two ice sheets where the ocean glittered.

At night, in the dim glow of the fire, Lyra saw emotions pass over the witch's face too. They were like ripples across a dark pond, and rarely good. A frown. Something twisting her mouth like pain. A flash of sorrow.

Pan would nibble Lyra's fingers when she grew too absorbed by these flickers. He molded himself into Lyra's arms every night now, as one soft-furred creature or the other. They were silent together too, though not out of stale anger anymore, or even shyness. It was as though they were both waiting for something, some sign or star for how things were to be now.

They were waiting to die. They were waiting to live.

They were waiting to see their Father.

5.

It was a little after midday, but already getting dark again when they landed in front of a steel house, clamped to the edge of a tall mountain.

The northern lights had already begun dancing faintly overhead. Lyra was certain she could watch them forever. It had been a few nights since she'd seen the first green tendrils, and she already knew that a part of her would always be longing to see them again. This was why her parents returned here, again and again, she was sure of it. It was the most beautiful thing she'd seen in her short life.

Lord Asriel's laboratory's few windows glowed comfortably and Lyra thought again of the farmhouse in the field and her fantasy about the family that lived there. The fields would be starting to grow again in England now. Maybe the family would have their lunch outside. Maybe they'd read together in the evenings and play games in the lanes during the day.

Still deep in these thoughts, Lyra allowed herself to be gently lowered into the powdery snow in front of a thick metal front door. She felt the witch step back and disentangle her part of the harness.

Her feet looked odd in their mismatched shoes. One was still the ill-fitting boot liberated from St. Dots, but the other was a crude fur-lined moccasin. The witch had skinned the little arctic hare for her without comment, and had watched as Lyra pricked her fingers bloody sewing herself the simple shoe over the next few evenings. When the shoe had fallen apart the next night, she'd taken it from Lyra without a word, and resewn some of her clumsier stitches, before returning it with a nod that was almost approving. Lyra had nearly broken their week-long silence then, but had mastered herself at the last moment. Mrs Coulter had killed her daughter. She had no business asking anything.

Suddenly she was terribly nervous- what if Lord Asriel didn't want to see her, what if he was ashamed of his daughter in her mismatched shoes, and her ragged deer-skin dress? Mrs Coulter would certainly be embarrassed, would dump her in a bath and scrub her until her skin blistered, and he must have liked something about Mrs Coulter. They must have agreed on some things to have a child. She turned to the witch, unsure how to articulate the question that was forming in her head ( _Will he be happy to see me? Are you sad to leave me? Will you still kill me?_ ), but the Witch lifted one long-clawed finger to her lips, moving her yellow eyes slowly to the edge of the cliff to Lyra's right.

Lyra turned and, with a near-silent gasp, saw the hulking white shape a little way down from them. The bear's armor reflects the green light of the aurora. Lyra wished that he might turn a little, so she could see a full-grown Svalbard bear.

"Does he know we're here?" Lyra whispered. In all her books, bears can smell even a mouse from many miles away.

"No," The witch answered "I've used a glammer. But it would not hold against shouting or quick movements. Bears are very clever. No witch has ever fought one and won."

"Are there bears where you lived?" Lyra asked before she could think better of it.

A shadow passed over the witch's face. She turned to face the door again.

"No," She said "We lived deep in a valley, cut off by a glacier. We had no contact with any other intelligent beast."

Lyra tried to picture this empty place. Tried to picture Mrs Coulter and the Magesterium breaking the peace like an eggshell.

Pan, in the form of an arctic fox, nibbled at her hand. It was too late. Lyra still felt the fat tears forming. There would be no stopping them now.

"I'm sorry" She choked out, feeling how inadequate her words were. Roger and Sacilia looked gravely at her out of her memories. Tony took her hand in the dark apartment. " _I'm so, so sorry_ " Pan made a little sound of distress.

The witch looked at her for a long moment. "It was not your fault child."

Lyra doesn't bother to say that it was, because what would a creature like the witch understand of Mrs Coulter's world? Of the lies Lyra spun everyday out of clean air and the kids she tricked just by existing? She wished that she could have been like the witch's dead daughter. She would have been free, under the northern lights, and Roger would have been safe. She would have liked to make a second moccasin, and learn the names of all the different kinds of snow, and talk to the four winds and fly wherever she pleased.

Her tears have begun freezing on her face. The witch had begun to look agitated, and opened her mouth to speak once more-

A low growl filled the air around them.

The witch tensed, and Lyra held her breath. A shiver crossed her shoulderblades, then danced back the other way.

The bears footfalls were silent, but his white shape moved into the light from the porch slowly.

"Prisoners?" He asked, and his voice was as deep as the mountain. Lyra shivered hearing it. "It is not your night for experiments. King Iofur has granted you many luxuries, but do not test our patience."

Lyra's eyes moved back to the witch. She was surprised to find that the woman was still staring at her. "Now I am sorry." She said, and Lyra saw for the first time how beautiful she had once been. She plucked a single golden maple leaf from her sleeve and blew it towards Lyra. "This is my clan's favor. Call on them and they will come to your aid. For what I have done to you Lyra Belacqua was undeserved. May Yambe-Akka forgive me and laugh with me in death."

In her hand, like the ripple of water, was her little dagger. Lyra stared.

And with that the witch took a deep breath in, smiled then screeched, leaping over the side of the cliff, and towards the armored bear.


	4. Lantern Slide II

The Missus had many friends. Our girl - a magpie of friends and allies in her former life - catalogued them after each visit. There were three young men - rival scholars on some form of experimental theology - who came on weekdays for tea. They obviously hated each other, and our girl wondered why the Missus only invited them as a set. It was like having three very large birds puffing up their feathers at each other over sweetmeats. There was also the old Lord with the snake daemon. The two acrobats who were very fashionable this season. A famous dancer who always kissed the Missus just at the edge of her mouth when he left. And of course the ever-changing parade of Magesterium people.

But despite all of these bodies, the assistant couldn't shake the feeling that her mistress was a solitary kind of creature. She couldn't help feeling that behind the her smiles - charming and easy as they were- the Missus wouldn't have cared if all of her fancy friends got their daemons cut in front of her.

That was silly of course. The cut was an established part of life. Older people still had daemons that talked to them, just like little kids did. It was embarrassing in better circles our urchin had learned, and most people now trained their daemons to be silent and hidden if they couldn't stomach the adult version of the Operation, which still left more lobotomized than cured.

"I wouldn't let them cut Farrah off me for anything" Snarky had told her once as they huddled around a fire they'd lit in an old garbage can in a derelict warehouse. He whispered it really. Didn't want any of his troops to hear him. They all knew it was the greatest luck of any street kid to get collected on one of the Magesterium drives. It meant you got hot food, and a bed, and usually a set of foster parents too.

"It costs too much." Snarky had whispered, and our urchin had found herself privately agreeing with him. She wouldn't know what she'd do without Nico to talk to.

The Missus hadn't made any comments about our girl's own cut, but lately she'd taken to sleeping with Nico curled in her arms, just to be safe. "It might be okay," Nico had said to her late one night, tucked against her chest as a tabby cat. "It might just look bad from the outside."

Our assistant had also learned to leave her Mistress alone after her parties. It was always when she was at her most volatile. Sometimes she would be so cold, our girl would wonder that the golden apartment wasn't covered in a light sheet of frost. Usually she would fawn and scold in chagrined tones - but after people had been she was just as likely to pinch.

The most important lesson had been never to attempt to see the portrait at one of these times.

Once, our girl had snuck into the dressing room, only to find the Missus on the floor of all things. Her usually elegantly-pinned hair was a mess, and her face was wet and blotchy. The room around her was in shocking disarray. A couple of her bottles of scent lay smashed, she'd thrown clothes everywhere - but now, the Missus sat perfectly still, hands cradled around the familiar small frame and the scent of burning metal in the air about her. She was staring down at the picture, and blind to everything else in the world.

Our urchin retreated silently. She wanted to hide the bright-eyed girl from the emptiness of that look. No one should be looked at like that. No one would survive that.


	5. Fourteen

1.

When Lord Asriel made Lyra crumble her witches' favour in her hand, a breeze had stirred the snow around them, as if a huge gate had been opened far away at the destruction of the thin leaf.

Hours later and Lyra felt an echo of it still, a mere shiver of goosebumps across her exposed arm, in the little store-room Thorold had put her in with an apologetic grimace. He had brought her a cup of tea, and some little spiced biscuits a few minutes later. Lord Asriel had said nothing to her since pulling her through the thick door of his laboratory.

It was hot in the small space of the store-room. Lyra had shed first her deer-skin parka, then her shoes, and was now contemplating taking off her overalls for the first time since she’d left Brytain. Pan had changed into a weasel and was panting loudly. She had also noticed the cupboard filling up with the scent of smoke, sour sweat and - worst of all - urine.

She’d only realised after all the biscuits were gone that the smell must be her.

Lyra had wondered if that was why Asriel had looked so unhappy to see her. At Jordan, Mrs Lonsdale had always taken special care to catch her, comb her hair, and scrub every inch of her before one of his visits. In her younger days Lyra had even allowed her hair to be tied back with a lace ribbon. Asriel never paid much attention to her, ribbon or no, but perhaps the cleanliness had mattered.

Just as she had begun fiddling with the first button of her pants, the door swung open. Asriel stood there, looking no less pleased, but dressed in a thick coat, snow-goggles combing his hair back. He’d put a finger to his lips before Lyra had even opened her mouth.

He waited for her to get dressed again, then motioned her to follow him further into the storeroom.

At the furthest wall he moved an old plate-steel stove aside with a quiet huff of air. There was a dark tunnel behind it. Stelmaria slipped into the darkness without a look back at either of them. The cold air was wonderful on Lyra’s face.

Asriel took her hand and put it on a loop at the back of his belt, obviously intended to hold some research instrument or other. It was too small for her hand, and she kept losing her grip on it.

“If you let go and lose yourself I will not return for you.” He said in a low voice.

Lyra nodded, tightened her lips, and felt Pan creep into the hood of her coat as a mouse. Asriel clicked on his naptha torch, and flicked back the dial to the lowest setting.

They walked for an endless time through a dark system of barely visible caves. There were no sounds but their quiet footsteps. Occasionally, Asriel would pause in the gloom and consult some internal compass. Once, Stelmaria gently nudged him in the right direction. Lyra could only stare at her silvery pelt, bright even in the darkness. She had wished often when she was younger that the snow leopard would brush past her by mistake. She’d longed to fall asleep with her face in the beautiful fur.

 _But for me to touch his daemon, my father would have to love me,_ Lyra thought to herself for the first time with something like comprehension. Pan fidgeted in the hood of her cloak, but did not contradict her. The knowledge broke in her then. _He's not glad to see me at all Pan -_ she thought and felt Pan’s shiver of distress - _he never even thinks of me!_

 _It doesn’t matter Lyra,_ Pan thought back after a long moment, _we have each other._

She stumbled then, and Asriel looked sharply back at the clatter of pebbles. They both waited as quiet returned to the corridor. Lyra schooled her face. _I spent all this time wishing for you,_ she thought at the back of her fathers' head once they were moving again. _But now I’d turn my face from you a thousand times if I could._

When they came out on the side of the mountain the aurora had vanished, but an vast field of stars stretched overhead. The snow was undisturbed as far as the eye could see on this side of the mountain. Asriel motioned her to wait.

There was another soft whisper of wind. Not quite the sound of snow drifting across snow, even to Lyra’s untrained ear - something more, something less, something just out of human earshot.

The witch tribe was barely two dozen strong when they landed.

To Lyra they all looked a little like her own witch. The same aquiline nose, the shape of the oldest womans eyes, the tangle of dark hair on a girl her own age. That one saw her looking and made a hissing face. Lyra quickly returned her gaze to her boots.

“This is the child?” A witch with her hair shorn off close to the scalp had spoken. “The one that was stolen from her mother and gifted to her father?” Lyra saw that between the fronds of cloud-pine embedded in her skin there was an equal if not greater network of scars. They shone bone-white in the starlight.

“This is Lyra Belacqua. She can’t be here. ” Asriel answered flatly. “I can’t have the Magesterium sticking their noses in my work now. This was your mistake, and you will fix it.”

The shaved-head witch looked at him for another long moment. Then her eyes moved to Lyra.

“Do you care so little for your offspring Lord Asriel?” There was no accusation in her voice, but Lyra felt her cheeks warm anyway.

Asriel only scowled. “You won’t get me with that old trick- there’s more important events in motion - I did my duty by her and kept her safe. Her mother has control of her now, and while that’s not ideal, I have no time for either of them at present.”

The youngest witch-girl was staring at Lyra with scorn now. “Is she stupid or something?”

Lyra bared her teeth. Next to her Pan turned into his polecat form. The old witch behind her cuffed the girl before he could leap.

“Hold your tongue Teleri!”

Asriel ignored them all and took a few steps towards the concealed mouth of the tunnel. “I have to get back. You can leave her here to freeze to death or be discovered by the bears.” He paused for a moment, and Lyra hoped - _wished_ for one ephemeral moment that he had changed his mind. But all he said was “Though I wouldn’t want Marisa after me if I were you. She’ll root what little is left of you out of the ground and salt the earth on principle alone.”

He took a few more steps, Stelmaria lightly padding ahead of him. Lyra turned.

“Father.” She said it with all the sharpness Mrs Coulter taught her, and all the coldness of her newfound dislike of him. He stopped, and after a moment glanced back at her. She didn’t know what he saw in her eyes, but he nodded.

“Lyra.”

Then he was gone, swallowed along with Stelmaria by the dark tunnel, and Lyra was left alone with the witches.

2.

She nearly did freeze to death after all.

The witches and their daemons spent a small eternity arguing about what to do with her, while Lyra shivered a little ways off from them. She tried building a small variation on an igloo that she had read about back at Jordan, but all that did was get her mittens soaking wet.

Nearly all of the tribe was for leaving her there, and taking their chances with the Magesterium.

“She’ll slow us down” The young one, Teleri, said at one point “I still haven’t done my trial- she’ll delay it even more.” The others shushed her again, but not nearly so smartly as when Asriel had watched them.

The scarred leader was for taking Lyra with them, as well as the little old crone who said all of two words, and though they were outnumbered they seemed to win the argument in the end. Lyra peered at the deep lines in her face and decided to call her Granny. She looked like a Grandmother from a picture book if not for the leaves that dotted her crumpled body.

Finally, Lyra heard the footsteps approaching and looked up.

“I’m Ostara.” The scarred witch said. “May I?” Without waiting for an answer she reached forward and touched the frayed edges of the harness Lyra’s witch had sewn for flying.

“It’ll do” Ostara said, frowning slightly, even as she pulled Lyra to her feet. “We must hurry- we have far to fly before dawn comes.”

“Where are you taking me?” Lyra asked, even as she let herself be turned like a package, and felt Ostara attaching the deer chords to herself.

“We were to go far to the east. We are leaving our homeland. But a detour for the summer won’t hurt anyone.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Lyra saw the other witches stony faces at this quiet pronouncement. Teleri was scowling hard enough that it had to hurt. Lyra wanted to defend herself, she hadn’t asked to be kidnapped - that was one of their lots choice- but that made her think of her witch and-

“I think she died fighting the bear.”

For the first time she had the tribe’s attention without anyone looking angry. They were startled.

“She was brave” Lyra said, not exactly encouraged by their eerie silence, but felt that the words would rip themselves out of her if she didn’t speak them. “She was going to kill me- but she changed her mind.”

She wanted to say more, to articulate - somehow- what it meant when the witch went over her stitches, or allowed her to light the fire, or left the bigger part of their campsite meals to her. _It meant something,_ Lyra wanted to say. _Even if all of you look at me like I’m a bit of dirt on your shoes - we meant something to each other in those last few days. She gave me her favour, and that’s why you’re here._

Granny mumbled something and made a quick hand gesture as if of a prayer.

“What was her name?” Lyra directed this question toward her. But the old witch just shook her head, and for the first time something like a smile played around her mouth.

“If she didn’t tell you child, then it doesn’t matter anymore.”

3.

To reach the little archipelago they flew three days and three nights with hardly a few hours rest.

Lyra could see it wearing on the witches that flew nearest to her and Ostara. They looked grey, even as the air warmed and the last of the snow-tipped mountains fell behind them. Even Teleri, who’d begun in a flashy style that zigzagged always just out of the field of Lyra’s vision, was flying in a drooping line by the time Ostara’s pelican daemon scouted land.

In the long hours of their journey, Lyra wondered about Teleri’s daemon. The rest of the tribe had bird daemons that they sent ahead to scout, or brought up the rear to watch for any sign of pursuit. Teleri flew alone, and Lyra watched her secretly when she could. There wasn't much else to do when one was being transported by people who refused to speak unless strictly necessary. She guessed that the other girl was around her own age, maybe a year or two older.

Teleri would have been called fat back in Jordan, with any number of other choice taunts added. But here, in the cold air with the cloud pine beneath her skin, she seemed more than anything else, _strong_. Like she was perfectly built for the climate and the conditions. Like a seal or an Armored Bear. She could certainly fly the fastest out of all the women except maybe Ostara if the clan leader hadn’t been burdened with Lyra.

Sometimes she let Granny’s daemon, a ruffled-looking swan, perch on her back for hours as she flew. And after a while Lyra noticed the way she kept an equally sharp eye on the old witch herself, offering her dried fish at regular intervals, and asking for a rest stop ostensibly for herself, always just as Granny began to droop.

When they landed on the rocky beach of the biggest island, Teleri immediately collected an armful of pine branches and made Granny sit on them.

Granny waved her away like she was shooing a swarm of gnats. “I’m not that old, girl!” But Lyra could see she was grateful, and she lowered herself into a seat, her swan daemon’s long neck curled around her own.

Lyra kept quiet as Ostara disentangled them, and then stretched with a groan. Her own muscles hurt too - mostly from the cutting of wearing the straps too long - but she would have bitten her own tongue off before she complained.

Pan had leapt out of her sleeve and was now exploring the little pebbled beach as a weasel. Beyond him, Lyra saw that they were surrounded by startlingly clear blue water, and a scattering of other small islands covered with trees. It was almost warm compared to above the clouds, and Lyra pulled her smelly deerskin shirt off gratefully.

The rest of the witches were setting off into the trees, once they had stretched and given their surroundings an unhappy look.

“Where are we?” Lyra asked Ostara. The witch didn’t answer her, still looking out to sea. Lyra followed her gaze and saw a pod of dolphins barely a hundred meters from shore. Ostara walked up to her shins into the water. Lyra saw the fins come closer, and heard the strange chattering talk of the animals. They were pink with sunburn on their backs. Ostara bent her ear thoughtfully to each one. Finally she nodded, touched her palm to the surface of the water, and straightened again.

“Can you speak to them?” Lyra asked, even as Pan nudged her to be quiet.

“No” Ostara said, walking past her, and towards the line of trees. Lyra turned and saw that the other witches had been busy. They’d dragged large branches and were building a rough lean-to against the biggest tree a little ways into the woods. “But we do not need to speak to understand. The islands are undisturbed. Come now and help.”

The next days were the hardest Lyra had ever worked in her life. They built not only the big lean-to structure, but several smaller dwellings all around it. She helped make rope out of reeds, she clambered over rocks for mussels and seaweed to dry near the fire, she thatched pine branches to roofs, and collected endless pine cones and branches for the fire.

“I thought witches lived in trees” She said, rather rudely to Granny on the day they finished work on the biggest roof.

“Humans!” Granny answered, cuffing Lyra like she’d seen her do to Teleri “We’re much the same as you people you know. Some live in big stone houses, some live in a field. Sometimes we live in trees like birds, sometimes we don’t.”

Lyra told her about Mrs Coulter's golden penthouse apartment carefully. She added a few architectural elements to make it even grander and more impressive, but the old witch still twisted her mouth once she stopped talking. "Sounds like plain human foolishness. All that gold and frippery! And for what? Did it make your mother happier Lyra?"

Lyra thought about that for the whole afternoon. The question had quite stunned her. She'd never really wondered whether Mrs Coulter was happy. She seemed, in her daughter's mind, like a person who didn't need anything as pedestrian as happiness.

She wondered once again what Mrs Coulter was doing. Even if she had been far away in the North, she would have discovered by now that Lyra had disappeared from St. Dots. Would she be angry? Upset? After her time at boarding school Lyra felt more like an expensive belonging Mrs Coulter had lost than her daughter. Surely she’d give up after a few more months of nothing.

The question was had anyone seen the witch take Lyra? Ostara had quizzed her for hours on this point and Lyra had been sorry she couldn’t be of more help. “She caught Pan and knocked us out” Is all she could say about the subject. “We was pretty far away from the school grounds at that point- and nobody knew we went - but a witch is a witch.”

Ostara had agreed with this. A witch was an unusual sight in England, and if someone had spotted them, they would have remembered. If that someone had remembered the maple leaves, they could be identified. They had come to the islands as a sort of limbo, and at night, around the fire, they discussed what they should do.

“I say we kill her and throw the body into the sea” A witch called Yelena had suggested sometime before Midsummer. “Then we go on with the old plan and leave this whole mess behind. They can’t possibly search the whole Altai Mountains.”

Lyra had been relieved that this suggestion was only met with raised eyebrows, and (in Granny and Ostara’s case) outright anger. Teleri had only looked at Lyra.

It was hard to be afraid of her Mother and the Magesterium on the archipelago. They seemed like bad dreams.

“Why can’t we just stay here?” Lyra had asked Granny another evening. They’d spent the afternoon together, Granny teaching Lyra what mushrooms were edible and which would end in a squirming death. She was flying just below the canopy scouting ahead with rheumy eyes, while Lyra tried to keep up over the damp forest floor.

“Too close to everything." Granny said "Magesterium isn’t here now, but they’d sniff us out in a year or two. World’s getting smaller all the time.”

“Why don’t I come with you to the Altai mountains then?” Lyra said innocently. Like she hadn’t spent every moment since Yelena mentioned it thinking about it. Perhaps they could even teach her how to fly!

Granny floated down and picked up another big canterelle that Lyra had missed. Tossed it in the woven basket she'd saddled Lyra with. “Because you wouldn’t be able to survive there. You’re not a witch Lyra-girl. No matter how hard you wish you were one.”

4.

It was the hive that changed everything.

Lyra had swum across the narrow strip of sea between the big island and a smaller neighbour. She'd done it a few times before, reveling in the chance to explore on her own, but this was her furthest journey yet. Pan had turned into a porpoise and she’d alternated between holding on to him and dog-paddling on her own. She’d climbed on to one of the big rocks on the shore for a while, drying like a lizard in the hot summer sun. She still wore her old St Dot’s shirt, and had rolled up her overalls just above her knees.

After she’d dried off, Lyra had turned to the shady cool of the trees behind her and begun exploring. The first she knew of the hive was the low buzz that filled her ears as soon as she passed the first line of pine trees.

It was built in the hollow of a dead tree near the center of the small island. Lyra watched the little insects trundle back and forth between the nest and the small plants that dotted the ground all around them. Roger and her had found a beehive once, they’d had to ask Ton-

She near choked on the thought, clenching her hands into fists. How could she have even asked to stay with the witches when the gobblers still had Roger? What kind of friend was she? The old St. Dot’s rage came back to her then. When Tony had done it, he had just reached into the hive, slow as you please, and come out with a chunk of honeycomb. Lyra could do that. She had a vision of herself returning to the main island, triumphant with her golden bounty.

The first sting was the worst. For a moment Lyra thought a snake had bitten her it hurt so much. But then she looked at her reaching hand and saw it was an insect. Not a bee. A wasp.

She had screamed then, but she was already surrounded, and being stung from all sides.

She waved wildly around herself, while Pan yipped in his familiar weasel form, unable to help beyond swatting at the wasps ineffectually. She tripped on her own feet and fell, hitting her head hard on a fallen log . The fall dazed her, as did the blood in her mouth, and the continued angry buzz of the wasps around her face.

Then a pair of hands pulled under her arms, and she left the wasps behind, left the trees, until nothing but blue cloud-dotted sky surrounded her.

Lyra blinked. It was colder up here and she felt goosebumps rise on her arms, felt her eyes sting from the bites and the wind as they traveled, felt the throb on the side of her head. Then before the idea to turn around was fully formed in her mind, she was being lowered to warm rocks at the side of a little tide pool filled with pretty sea fronds.

Teleri knelt down next to her, and was quite expertly scraping out the stingers with her fingernail. She was quiet as she did it, tongue poking out slightly between her teeth with focus. Lyra who’d never been this close to the other witch without her scowling just stared. Once every barb was out, Teleri cupped water in her hands and let it run over each stinger bump. It felt nice.

“Probably better if you just get in” She said, and Lyra obeyed without thinking, slipping into the tide pool in her clothes, Pan following as a water-snake. It felt wonderful. She ducked her head under and some of the pain in her head left.

Teleri was still there when Lyra re-emerged. She’d half-expected her not to be. She was nudging something next to her on the rock. A snapping tortoise. Lyra had never seen any on the islands. She blinked again, clearing the water from her eyes before she understood.

“It’s your daemon!”

Teleri looked up at her and finally scowled. “Of course he’s my daemon - what else would he be?”

Before Lyra could snap back, the tortoise turned his small brown head towards Teleri and said, quite smartly in a voice almost like a scholar’s “Don’t be rude Teleri.”

Teleri rolled her eyes, but then to Lyra’s wonder mumbled “I beg your pardon”

“It’s okay” Lyra answered, still too dazed to remain angry for long. Pan nosed over her shoulder.

“He’s settled Lyra” He whispered into her algae-covered hair. Lyra looked at the tortoise again. Pan was right. There was no tell-tale flicker about his form. He was as solid as the rock underneath him.

“But you’re our age” Lyra said out loud “How come he settled so early?”

This time Teleri drew herself up, not with hurt, but pride.

“It’s the mark of a clan leader. Maturin settled last year.” Then she seemed to remember something and her face fell into shadow “Much good it’s done us. It’s been a year and we still haven’t done our trial.”

“Your trial?”

Teleri touched Maturin’s head with the tip of her finger. “Every witch has to go into the wilderness and be cleaved from her daemon” She recited as if out of a book. “It’s how we can send our daemons away from us on errands.”

Lyra didn’t see how a tiny snapping turtle daemon would be any good for errands in the vast arctic seas, but for once, she wisely held her tongue.

“Why didn’t it happen?”

Teleri looked at her and said nothing.

“Oh” Lyra sunk a little more into the pool until her chin touched the water “My mother. Right.”

They sat in silence for a long moment. Lyra looked at the crushed shells on the bottom of the pool. She was probably alright to swim back soon. Pan seemed less sure, but he understood her wish to get away.

Suddenly there was a little splash. Lyra and Teleri both watched with astonishment as Maturin emerged and made a playful biting motion at Pan.

Pan, not to be outdone, turned into a big sea-turtle and hit Maturin gently with his flipper. He made a mistake though by turning into something so big. Maturin ducked under him, and bit his back-flipper while Pan tried over-exaggeratedly to turn around.

Teleri laughed. After another helpless splash that ended with both Pan and Maturin on their shells, Lyra gave in and laughed too.

5.

They were friends after that.

Lyra sometimes wondered how she lived on the island before befriending Teleri. The youngest witch knew where every bird had its nest, where the seals played out at sea, what flowers to eat, and how to imitate almost any bird call.

Lyra in turn taught Teleri how to climb trees, even if the witch took ambitious leaps that looked suspiciously like flying to her friends eye. She passed on her own cribbed version of swimming, taught to her by the Gyptains in Oxford canals. With great airs she taught Teleri wrong lessons about astronomy, geography and a host of other subjects she’d only half listened to at Jordan.

Pan tumbled around the slowly moving Maturin as a great variety of forms. They played a game where Pan would turn into a fox, toss Maturin into the sea, and leap to join him there as a fish. This was a particular favorite of Granny's, and the old witch would hoot whenever she caught them at it.

The other witches watched their friendship with less exuberant emotions.

“This is going to end badly” Ostara said to Granny over the fire, after both Lyra and Teleri had fallen asleep huddled together. “We’ve dawdled over this decision too long. There was a Magesterium airship just two-hundred miles from here last night.”

“Sometimes dawdling is life.” Granny answered serenely “A snowflake caught by the setting sun. We should understand that better than most.”

“Teleri does not understand. Nor does Lyra.” Ostara said. If either girl had been awake they would have been surprised by the sadness in her voice. And by the firmer tone of Granny’s answer.

“They will learn.”

6.

“What will you do once you arrive in the mountains?” Lyra asked, idly feeding another flower to Maturin’s slow chewing mouth. Pan slept on her back in his ferret form. It was afternoon, and long warm sunlight filled the world. Teleri was picking tufts of grass where she lay in that days newly discovered meadow.

“Try to be the way we were I suppose” Teleri answered. Lyra tensed for a moment, but there was no particular barb in the other girls words.

“How were you?” Lyra asked, she felt Pan stir and wake a little with interest.

“Wild” Teleri answered gleefully “We danced naked under the full moon, and drank the blood of human children.”

Lyra threw a pinecone at her in answer. Teleri laughed. Then she grew serious, turned over on her back and watched the sky overhead.

“We were different than we are now.” She said after a long moment “Less afraid. I like Ostara, but I never expected her to be like this as a leader.”

“I thought Ostara-”

“She wasn’t always in charge.” Teleri answered “The witch that took you was.”

“She was?” Lyra thought of her witches face, turned away from her and the flickering campfire. Of her scream when she attacked the armored bear.

“She was. She was good at it too, or at least everyone said she was. I was just little then.” Teleri sighed, and Lyra struggled to her feet. Pan leapt off her back lightly. She sat down next to her friend. Leaned her thigh against Teleri’s sun-warmed upper arm.

“What happened to her daughter?”

Teleri closed her eyes. Lyra looked at the veins shining through them.

“They said they were setting up a school for witch-kind children. We couldn’t fly then, we were too little. Magesterium caught us a few hundred meters from the school the first time we ran away. The second time we made it further, almost to the start of the glacier. The third time she was too sick to come along. They’d given us something, and she was always littler than me. I promised her I’d come back, with our mothers.”

Lyra held her breath. She guessed the next part, but she still hoped-

“When we came back the school had been closed. The soldier we caught said this Coulter woman had come and said witch children were too sickly for her project. So they killed them. All those kids.”

“Like they was rubbish” An angry voice said. Lyra took a moment to realize she herself had spoken. Teleri opened her eyes a sliver and nodded, closing them again.

“Something happened to our clan then. We went mad. Some of the best witches killed themselves in insane attacks against Magesterium airships. Some just closed up and died. That’s when Ostara took over. She used to be on the war council, but she said we should return home and go back to old ways.”

Teleri shaded her eyes and looked at Lyra. She sounded decades older than Lyra.

“And we tried that for a while. But nothing worked anymore. Nothing felt right. And then the Magesterium started setting up bases all over the north. We heard about it from other clans. So it could all happen again. That’s when Ostara decided we should leave.”

Lyra crawled over and matched Teleri’s pose. They could be a pair of scholars in the crypts underneath Jordan lying like this. Teleri's big arm was warm against Lyra’s. She couldn’t imagine Teleri- who’d fight anyone and anything, who was stronger than any kid Lyra had ever known - frightened. She found she hated the idea.

“Which of the three times did Maturin settle?” Lyra asked after a long moment. Maturin had crawled to the center of Teleri’s chest. One of his ancient eyes was watching Lyra.

“When we left home for good.” He answered.

They were silent for a long moment.

“Lets go to the rock pools” Teleri said a little to lightly to be real “I want some of that white kelp with dinner.”

Lyra watched her friend bob up through the trees, and began to follow slowly on the dappled moss underneath, Maturin leading the slow way ahead.

 _I’ll make them pay,_ she thought, and felt Pan’s agreement. _I will make her pay if its the last thing I do._

7.

The Magesterium dreadnought appeared the next week.

It was hazy, and difficult to see on the horizon, but Lyra understood as Teleri pointed it out to her from where they stood on the little pebbled beach together. "They must have seen the smoke from our fires" Teleri said with scowl. "Took them long enough." Lyra wondered when she'd grown so fond of the expression.

“We have a choice now. We’ve dithered but here it is.” Ostara said to them that night around the unlit fire-pit. Her eyes turned to Lyra. “We will not surrender you if you do not wish it. There will be villages along our journey. Small remote places where no one will find you.”

 _They’ll find me,_ Lyra thought, _and all that will have changed is that I’ll be older, and a little more frightened._

“I can lie” She said. Teleri, across from her and clearly visible by the waxing moon, was staring at her like she’d never seen her before “I struggled so much that the witch dropped me. I washed up here. I never saw her face. You fly away at dusk and I’ll set a fire. Burn everything we built.”

“You’re too fat to have been starving on an island for a whole summer.” Teleri snapped. Lyra thought the other girl might cry.

“My Father’s a famous explorer.” Lyra answered “I’ve been reading survival guides since I could read.”

Teleri shook her head again. “No. It’s dumb. They’ll kill you. You should come with us.”

Granny touched her arm. “It’s her choice. Not yours Teleri.”

“She’s choosing wrong!” Teleri spat out.

Granny peered at her for a long moment then turned to the circle. "They'll have found the body near Asriel's laboratory. Lyra didn't sprout a pair of wings and fly herself here. She was carried." Granny paused and shared a look with her daemon. He inclined his scarred beak. Lyra realized she'd never heard him speak. "She was carried by me."

There was a hushed pandemonium among the witches at this announcement that didn't end until Ostara hissed "Enough!"

"Are you sure about this?" She asked the old witch. Lyra saw Teleri's face had slackened into an expression of pure horror.

"I'm sure." Granny said. "The Altai mountains are too far for these old bones anyway."

 _"You can't-"_ Teleri began in a high-pitched voice that Lyra had never heard her use before. Granny put an arm around her, squeezed her once, then began the laborious process of getting to her feet. Teleri sprang up to help her as if on auto-pilot "Let's walk elskan." Granny said, and took her hand "Let's take one last long walk, and talk about your future."

Lyra didn't see either of them again until the sun was gleaming on the horizon and it was nearly time to depart.

“Burn everything that's left” Ostara reminded her again. They’d disassembled the camp and dumped most of the logs in the bay on the other side of the island in the night. Lyra knew it won't look like anything more than driftwood. They'd kicked the fire-pit apart, scattered the stones and buried the food the tribe wasn't taking.

Teleri, having finally returned to camp without Granny, had built up a small fire in front of Lyra without saying a single word. “You never build yours to last.” She said by way of explanation. “This will last.”

“I’m sorry you can’t stay to say goodbye.”

“She’s been ready to go to Yambe-Akka since we left home.” Teleri dashed a few tears from her cheeks like they were flies “She was staying for me.”

She smelled of salt and smoke when they put their arms around one another for the last time. Lyra watched her friend tuck Maturin into a pouch at her side. Watched the way she braided her hair into a single tight knot for flying. Watched how she stopped crying, not by and by, but all at once, face settling into its customary snarl. _We must remember everything about her Pan,_ Lyra thought. _We have to be strong like her._

The witch tribe flew with the first proper rays of the sun. They flew close to the water, like a strange migratory flock of birds. Lyra watched them until they were no more than distinguishable black spots on the horizon.

The fire Granny and Lyra started that night lit up the whole island. They dragged everything to the beach, and Lyra and Granny sat together on the rocks and watched the approaching small ships from the hulking Magesterium cruiser. Granny waited until they could see the first of the men in the orange glow of the flames before she took off. North.

"I’ll try and make it all the way home" She’d said to Lyra with something like a smile "I’d like to die where I was born."

8.

They quartered Lyra in a small cabin on the Magesterium cruiser that obviously belonged to an officer. They brought her blankets, and hot tea and tinned condensed milk and an ugly dress to wear. They didn’t talk to her, nor would they answer her questions about the ships' destination.

But they knew who she was.

Lyra saw her own face countless times, plastered up around the mess hall. Words jumped out at her. MISSING. REWARD.

 _Whose reward?_ She wondered. Maybe the Master put in money to have her found? It couldn’t have been Asriel, unless he was no longer a prisoner, and had suddenly started caring about her for the first time in her life.

It was only when they docked at Helsinki the next evening that Lyra understood.

Mrs Coulter stood at the docks, a single slash of blue silk among all the grey uniforms. She looked thinner than when Lyra had last seen her, and she let out a strange undignified gasp when their eyes met. Her hands, which had been worrying her cream gloves, reached for Lyra as soon as she was in reaching distance. Pulled her close. Lyra heard her Mother’s heartbeat as she was pressed against her chest, felt her unsteady breath on top of her head.

"Lyra" She kept whispering. "My Lyra. Thank the Authority that you're safe. My sweet girl." Like it was some sort of litany. _Perhaps it was to her,_ Lyra thought. She certainly treated her differently. Gone was the artificial affection of their last meeting outside St Dot's. Gone was the polish of her monthly letters. This Mrs Coulter clutched Lyra's hands and kissed her face. This Mrs Coulter wouldn't have an inch of distance between them for even a minute. This Mrs Coulter was going to suffocate her daughter against her shoulder by mistake any minute. The monkey watched Pan dolefully at her feet. Lyra had a feeling that he'd like to cross the last few steps between them and-

 _And what?_ Pan thought to her. _Groom me? Bite me? That thing is her real face and don't you forget it._

Mrs Coulter took another one of those wet shuddering breaths into her hair, then finally stepped back a little to cup Lyra's face with her hands. Lyra tried to arrange the framed face into something sweet and grateful. She wasn't sure she succeeded, but Mrs Coulter's eyes were still full of tears. _I haven't Pan,_ Lyra thought back to him. _I could never._

"I've been quite out of my mind" Mrs Coulter said, and abruptly laughed, a clear pretty sound that got her looks from several of the sailors on the dock. Even with her make-up half in ruins she was surely the most beautiful woman they'd seen in months "Only you would get yourself kidnapped by a witch of all ridiculous creatures!"

Lyra clenched her teeth, but managed to lift the corners of her mouth in something that might pass as a smile. Mrs Coulter's perfume was quickly overpowering the stink of the docks. The scent of the sea had vanished when Lyra had stepped on to the cruiser. The Magesterium vessel was all antiseptic. But for a moment she remembered Teleri's solid embrace and the salt that covered them. _A witch of all ridiculous creatures indeed._

 _Careful,_ Pan hissed in her mind, but she didn't need the warning. She'd made a choice.

"I missed you." She pitched her voice a little higher as she said this, like the little girl Mrs Coulter never met, and watched with satisfaction as her Mother's eyes filled with fresh tears. _Maybe you can just keep her crying,_ Pan mused. _Would save us from ever having to talk to her properly._

But Mrs Coulter surprised her, letting go of her, and taking out a little silk handkerchief and compact to dab at her eyes. There was something worn-out about her, now that her tears had stopped. She really did look like someone who hadn't slept in months. Lyra didn't like to think about that. She remembered Granny saying _'and did any of it make her happier?'_ and bit her lip. Helsinki glowed through the fog behind her Mother, but Lyra didn't quite dare to look away from her yet. The Magesterium ship crew had given her an outfit that was at least ninety-percent synthetic. Mrs Coulter was bound to notice it any minute now, and then the old rhythm of their life together would return, and she'd be sent to some new exhausting school and -

"I've got something for you" Mrs Coulter said once her face was in good order again "Well-someone." She hesitated a moment, then put one arm around Lyra's shoulders. She did it carefully, like she wasn't sure she had the right. Lyra felt something contract in her chest at that ever so slightly "I'm sorry it took so long darling." She whispered in Lyra's ear, just for her to hear, like they were sharing a secret. Like they were friends. Turned Lyra more fully towards the city.

And _there_ at the end of the dock - by a gleaming silver carriage with a uniformed driver framed perfectly by the low glow of a streetlamp - _there_ stood Roger.


End file.
